Paying Your Debts
by KayteaEM
Summary: It's Jimmy's first kill, and Cas's first revenge.


**Title:** Paying Your Debts

**Summary:** It's Jimmy's first kill, and Cas's first revenge.

**Fandom:** Supernatural

**Disclaimer:** Don't own them! (biggest regret in life…)

**Warnings:** Brief descriptions of torture (to a non-human creature)

**A/N:** The creature in this story is based off of this guy here: wiki/Baykok

Enjoy!

* * *

As with everything, there are rules regarding the possession of vessels. He or she must belong to one of the few, blessed bloodlines. Upon the completion of a mission, a vessel must be released whole – both in mind and in body. Should an angel require the services of a new vessel, or the repeated services of a former, that vessel, that _being_, must always be given a choice. _Will you host me, brother? Will you submit yourself in all things? Will you help me to carry out the will of our Lord, your God? _

They are honored when a vessel says 'yes.'

There are other rules though, ones not written formally in the celestial plane. Perhaps the most well regarded is the Law of Supremacy: an angel must never give a vessel control while he embodies it. Should a vessel submit himself to God's will, he must do so completely and an angel shall always dictate his actions. Those of the holy order shall lead, and never shall they themselves submit.

So when Cas begins to pull back, giving Jimmy control over his body, he knows there's no going back.

_Crossed the Rubicon, _their mind supplies.

_The river? _

_Yeah. Caesar took that step and the result was civil war. The die is cast. The point of no return. _

_Indeed. _

_I'm going to _enjoy _this. _

They've been hunting the baykok for a week now, trailing it through the forests. Ever since the apocalypse began some of the older beasts have awakened, stirring from hibernations with Lucifer's scent on the air. All manner of creatures have pulled themselves from the earth, altering their traditional habits in honor of the world's impending destruction and its eventual rebirth: timid hunters now scout in the open, what once fed on spirit now craves flesh, and there proves to be disorder among even the most chaotic entities.

The transfer is complete and Jimmy snaps back into himself. "Topsy Turvy," he says, speaking for the first time in months.

Cas, now just a pinprick of righteous fury, hovering in the very back of their mind - agrees.

_We will enjoy this. _

They've got the baykok up against a rock enclave, one they had prepared two days before. It was easy enough to trick. With an angel coming from behind and the flesh they'd planted enticing him forward, he was bound to end up there eventually. Now the symbols Cas had carved into the rock pulse red hot, keeping the baykok still. He strains though, wailing in a way that makes the ground shake and the leaves splinter. Jimmy knows it's only Cas hanging out in the background that keeps his eardrums intact.

_A devil's trap without the demon, _he thinks. _Or the devil._

_Yes_. _This form of confinement… it is old. Crude. Most have forgotten its existence, even the angels. I know of it only because-_

_You're a nerd that sucks up random knowledge like a sponge?_

Jimmy doesn't need Cas in control of his body to know when he's frowning. Hell, Cas doesn't need a body to frown; it's all in the voice. Chuckling to himself, Jimmy edges closer to the baykok. The creature's dug up the flesh they planted, munching on it with one long fingered hand, but he keeps his eyes trained on his captor. He shrinks at Jimmy's laugh.

_I am not a… 'nerd,' as you say. _

_Uh huh. Tell that to Dean._

It's like the name is a beacon of intent, the throwing of a switch, because all at once their humor is gone, evaporating into the soil at their feet. Jimmy's smile cracks and Cas… Cas flairs in the back of his mind, pulsing with something like fury and grief and shame all rolled into one. It's so overpowering that he has to wait a bit for him to ease up. Only then does Jimmy have the motor control to stalk towards the beast they've caught.

Throwing his coat back, Jimmy pulls a long knife from the inside pocket. It's decked out in a hundred, tiny runes, each one painstakingly etched into the metal. He had watched Cas carve them late one morning, three days into their hunt. Each had to be traced in blood, etched, dipped in holy water, and etched again until the entirety of the blade was covered. It took him hours of work but each time a rune was done he'd sit a moment, settling into something a little closer to peace.

Jimmy grips the handle now, rushing at the baykok.

"Let's do this," he growls, and slices.

* * *

"Why did you call me?"

It's the only thing Cas can think to say. Sam looks up from the chair he's hunched in, fingers gripping at his hair. He shakes his head though, trying to give a shrug that instead ends in a spasm. Shuddering, he leans his forehead against the mattress. Cas notices absently that the shell of Sam's ear is just a quarter of an inch from Dean's hand and he has a startlingly brilliant image of them both, just a few months prior. Dean had sat on a low wall, putting him above Sam for once in his life. In between munching fries he'd hovered his finger around Sam's ear, all the while singing, _I'm not touching yoooooou! _He'd continued this odd game throughout lunch despite how many times Sam batted his hand away. It was only when Cas asked what the point of _not _touching someone was that he laughed and settled down.

Cas wants that now. He wants Dean's hands to perform ridiculous, impulsive actions. Instead they lay unresponsive at his sides, covered in so many bruises that he can't see the white of his skin.

"Why did you call me?" he asks again but gets the sense that he's the only one listening.

"It just… happened so fast." With an explosion of breath Sam looks up but says nothing more. That's apparently all there is to say. He puts his head back down on the bed.

Later, when Sam finally has enough caffeine in him to at least play at normalcy, he tells Cas the story in horrific detail, as only a hunter can. They'd been trailing after a wendigo… at least, that's what they'd thought at the time. Five miles out from civilization and suddenly their prey is in the trees, tracking _them_. The baykok had honed in on Dean, sensing him to be the more violent of the two, and had attacked with a speed the boys weren't prepared for. Nor could they have guessed the intelligence with which their prey – now predator – planned its attacks. Sam was quickly dispatched, thrown into the nearest oak and his last memory was of the baykok methodically breaking Dean's legs.

"So the prey can't run," Cas murmurs. He trails two fingers over Dean's knee. "The baykok isn't interested in the hunt itself, only the end result."

They take a break for more coffee.

When Sam had awakened, he'd found his brother mangled in ways that had him pressing his mouth to the bark of the tree, turning away and desperately sucking in air. Training eventually kicked in, urging him to fumble out his cell phone and call the one number that had always been associated with help – Bobby's.

"It was instinct, I think." Sam says. "He picked up and I just started… word vomiting, you know? Going on about the baykok and passing out and how Dean's collarbone was sticking straight up…" he swallows, giving Cas a flickering smile. "He _freaked out _on me. 'Why aren't you calling a fucking ambulance, you idjit?! Why the fuck are you calling me?' He put me on hold to call the local hospital, I got my shit together and called the police, Rufus was with Bobby at the time – getting help with a woman in white, I think - and I'm pretty sure _he _called as well. Before I knew it, seemed like half the town was there. EMT's were hauling Dean off and this one girl kept telling me everything was gonna be fine but… but I was so _sure _he…" Sam trails off, crushing the Styrofoam cup until hot coffee leaks down onto his hand. He doesn't notice.

"Dean was dead," Cas says. He watches as Sam's whole body jerks, his eyes blowing wide, but he doesn't yet know how to convey such a statement in a way humans would find… comforting. "He was dead, Sam. At least, his heart must have stopped. Otherwise the baykok would not have left him."

"Yeah… read that, somewhere. Just keeps going till they're dead." Sam brushes at his brother's face with coffee stained fingers. Cas finds the gesture soothing, even when it's not directed at him.

"And then?" he asks, after they've sat for some time. The question strains against his vocal chords but he forces it out and lays it before the brothers, like an offering.

"And then we came here. Dean was in surgery for a while. Things were… punctured, I guess. Jesus. But I called Bobby again and I called you since," Sam attempts another smile; better this time. "you know."

"I _don't _know," Cas snaps, quicker and more truthfully than he'd intended. There has been a weight pressing on his chest since he'd entered this room and now it spreads, crawling up his shoulders and forcing him to carry a burden he just can't hold. He glances at Dean's face and immediately has to look away. The dark bruising around his eyes fades into tendrils, like a virus sweeping through his body. It's something constant, yet evolving, and Cas knows it can't easily be fixed. Sam knows this too, yet continues to look at Cas as he once did – as a being holy and worthy of regard.

Turning from them both Cas speaks to the windows. "I can't fix him," he hisses, in case that wasn't clear enough. He'd take the implication over reality – that he'd allow Dean to suffer this long before bothering to act – over the truth that nothing can be done. That _he_, despite all his powers and the faith of these two amazing boys,can do nothing to help.

"It's old," he spits, fingers clenching against the seams of his overcoat. "_Rare. _No one has seen a baykok in hundreds of years, at least! And of course your brother has to be the one to find it, perhaps the very last in existence." Cas throws a glare in the bed's direction and misses Sam's amusement, timid as it is. "We always knew their magic was strong though, even if it hasn't fed in generations. It's why they're avoided. Why they're feared. Once a warrior submits in combat their injuries are truly their own and not even an angel's grace can…" Cas tenses but tries to breath deeply, having once been told that it helps to calm the mortal body. Turning around, his eyes immediately seek Dean out, and he lightly touches one ankle.

"I cannot heal him," he mourns.

"I know." Sam says.

"_Then why did you call me?_" The window behind him cracks.

It feels like a betrayal, to witness something he has no control over, and Cas has never fully understood that emotion until now. He almost asks if Sam is punishing him for something but when he looks up the youngest Winchester is shaking his head, a true smile lighting his face.

"Cas," he laughs, "I called because you should _be_ here. You don't have to… Listen, being useful doesn't always mean being of use. Just staying with him… it helps."

"I don't understand how," Cas admits.

"It does. Trust me."

"But what am I to-"

"_Sit_." Sam eyes the chair purposefully until Cas does just that. "Sit and wait. It sucks, I know but… we sit. Drink some coffee. Read crappy paperback novels. When Dean wakes up we'll feed him Jell-O and scratch his legs with pencils when the casts get itchy. And hell, maybe we'll enjoy the peace and quiet while we've got it."

Cas tries to summon up his own smile at the lame joke but fails miserably. Sam waves him off.

"Just wait," he says again. "That's all we can do for now. Dean will heal."

Of course he will. Cas won't allow for anything else.

But in light of that truth his mind is already speeding off, thinking of locations, and hunting grounds, tools and rituals he'll need to perform. Soon enough his wings will pick up pace with his thoughts… but for now, he sits. In fact, for three whole weeks he sits, guarding Dean Winchester as his body knits together at an agonizingly slow rate. In that time, they do everything that Sam said they would and more. There is Jell-O, and pencils. There is also crap TV, fluffed pillows, and the never-ending mantra of _please guys I'm begging you, what the hell do I have to do to get a cheeseburger around here? - No I don't want more applesauce, asshat! Cas? Come on, please!_

He doesn't bring him cheeseburgers – they don't go well with a bruised throat – but Cas brings him everything else he can think of. Books, for those rare moments when Dean craves literature, and car magazines the rest of the time. Bobby's place is rummaged for anything that might prove beneficial – the highlights being a set of speakers and an unopened model plane from Dean's childhood (_Could have sworn this baby was left behind in a motel. Fuck yeah!_) When the days wear on Cas starts looking for the obscure. He travels to Paris where he finds a cobblestone that, strangely, has watermarks that greatly resemble the Impala. Cas tears it up without a second thought. It leaves a hole in the road but he finds that Dean's smile is quite the replacement. Two days after this the weather turns cool and Cas, needing a break from the reapers that chill the hospital, flies to Peru. There he meets a grandmother craving stories, so he tells her all about Dean – his laughter and the brightness of his soul. She becomes smitten with this boy she's never met and when it's time to go she hands Cas a blanket, knitted for her fourth grandchild. She informs him that he's warm enough now under the earth so perhaps his Dean could make use of it instead. Cas arrives back just as Dean begins to sleep and he's able to tuck the blanket around his legs with embarrassment or fuss.

Two weeks in though and their hunter is nearly crawling up the walls. It's Jimmy who has the idea, laughing uproariously in the back of their mind. So at his urging Cas flies to Las Vegas and spends the night acquiring the latest and greatest adult films. When he returns, dumping the collection of x-rated material onto the bed, his family just stares at him, wide-eyed.

"I thought you enjoyed these," he says, completely straight-faced.

Dean finds the idea of Cas purchasing all this far more entertaining than the videos themselves – just as Jimmy knew he would.

Despite the reason for their occurrence, these are all good things.

Of course, not everything is easy during that month. Cas understands this the most when Dean is across his lap, heaving into a plastic bowl from pain. He strokes his hair, unconsciously mimicking the gestures Dean once gifted him after Famine's defeat. It is in these moments that his thoughts turn back to the baykok.

Thus, nearly a month after the attack, when Dean is just beginning to experiment with crutches, Cas tells him he has something to do. Dean just waves him off, muttering that he should bring him some real goddamn food when he gets back.

Cas promises to do so and begins his hunt.

* * *

Revenge is not in an angel's nature.

Everything they do - everything they are – is an extension of God. No action they perform can be wrong, for that is God's will. Even if this weren't so, there would still be no revenge for the very word itself suggests agency: the drive to find some kind of personal closure. Should an angel act in response to another, that too is merely God's will.

Of course, this is how things _once_ were. Yet even with all the changes two boys have wrought, revenge is still a foreign concept to most angels.

It is not, however, unknown to a human.

They're still in the hospital when Jimmy starts piping up, broadcasting his thoughts louder than he'd ever dared before. They both know that something must be done. Not so much for Dean but for _them. _In the safe cocoon of his conversations with Jimmy, Cas acknowledges his own anger. His helplessness. Should they allow the baykok to escape something in him will surely snap, bending under the weight of Dean's near death and the fact that they did _nothing. _

Cas was unable to save him,

(_you didn't know_)

and was unable to heal him.

(_mojo not up to snuff, man? Relax. I don't need you kissin' it to make it better._)

It would seem then that punishment is the only action left available.

And yet…

Retribution is one thing; revenge something else entirely.

So Jimmy volunteers instead.

This is how they end up here, gripping the baykok by the bones of its neck. The creature's entire skeleton is sheathed in a thin membrane. It resembles skin but is thicker, shifting like a waterbed under Jimmy's palm. He knows from the encyclopedia Cas has got in their mind that this skin is simultaneously the baykok's greatest protection and his weakness. Try to take him unprepared and your weapons are useless, absorbed into the membrane or bouncing off the parts that have toughened with age. Dean learned this the hard way when his bullets ricocheted. Half way through the fight his left hand was absorbed after throwing a punch, pulled down until it touched the baykok's ribs. When he'd snatched it back there were acid burns dotting across his skin, spreading until each had trippled in size. Nothing he had – neither strength nor knowledge – proved useful against the beast.

Of course, all this means nothing when you've got a specialized blade hand carved by an angel.

"You're my first kill," Jimmy says, plunging said blade into the creature's arm. When the steel hits the membrane it emits a thin vapor, curling up to meet his nose. The baykok shrieks a sound no human vocal cord could produce. As it drops to its knees, clutching its ruined limb, Jimmy casually cleans the knife on his coat.

"Honestly? I'm not sure how I feel about that." The blade finds the baykok's calf next. "Did I ever want to kill? No." His knee. "Ever had a reason to? Course not." The edge of its foot, grinding against bone. "Most dangerous thing I did before all this was tennis on Saturday mornings. Great workout, but let me tell you, the tendinitis is a bitch."

As if to prove his words Jimmy grabs the baykok's wrists, slashing horizontally across them both. As the membrane that protects the delicate area is flayed open the creature bucks, spitting in what might have once been a language. It continues to spasm against him but Jimmy's still got the use of Cas's strength, allowing him to easily pin the baykok down. He's not a hunter, never been trained to fight, but the moment the baykok pitches forward Jimmy's instinctively lying atop of him, allowing their combined weight to plow them into the ground. The thing is whimpering now, tiny hitches of breath that puff against the dirt. Jimmy presses his arm against the baykok's skull and allows his knife to trail along its cheek.

"Did you do this to Dean?" he hisses, "Well? Did you spread him out in the dirt? Beat on him even when he couldn't fight back? I know one thing, he wouldn't have made near as much noise as you."

The baykok is openly crying now, emitting a wail that's far more animalistic than humanoid. Jimmy is suddenly disgusted with this creature, pulsing with more anger than he's ever felt before. Even more than when he'd thought Castiel had betrayed him, and that's saying a great deal. In the back of their mind, Cas curls briefly in guilt before flaring twice as bright. _Do it, _he says, confident in the necessity of this action. _Do it now. _

So he does. Jimmy isn't sure who's controlling his hand, but one of them brings the knife down against the baykok's neck. The blade slices through the membrane and they pull down with all their strength, flaying the baykok down his entire spinal cord.

As it bucks, Jimmy has time to whisper,

"Dean didn't beg. You, however, _will._"

* * *

They spend the rest of the night carving the beast. Each bit of membrane is peeled away; each exposed bone shaved and discarded. When the baykok is nothing more than jumbled pieces of flesh Cas again takes control, smiting the remains. They fly to a purified stream where the blade is cleansed and then stop at the nearest White Castle. There they pick up burgers, fries, chicken bites, chicken tenders, chicken stuffed into wraps, soda, milkshakes, coffee, cookies, and ice cream. The only pies they have are nearly bite-sized so they triple the order, stuffing containers of s'mores and apple pastries into their bag. The boy behind the counter nods to all this with his mouth hanging open and Cas can see that he has his tongue pierced.

They're nearly out the door when he flinches, guiltily thinking of Sam. The cashier looks like he might cry but they succeed in obtaining two more salads, a parfait, and a couple extra cookies. Cas remembers that Sam enjoys oatmeal raisin and feels justifiably pleased with this atonement.

The White Castle, however, is not quite as chipper. It will, in fact, never be the same.

But Cas and Jimmy don't know this.

They return to the hospital with their loot, bragging a bit that sneaking in food is child's play when you can just 'beam' in. They set up dinner directly in front of the boys, the entirety of their purchases covering Dean's portable table and then some. He looks at them with far more reverence than when Cas pulled him out of hell.

"Dude." he says, and nothing else. "_Dude._"

"I said I would bring you food."

They dig in. Even Cas, dipping a chicken nugget into BBQ sauce until exactly half of it is covered. For a brief moment the dark red color reminds him of something else that was spilled… but with Jimmy's help he dispels the images. This is what they want: just a quite meal with their friends. Quiet because they're listening for the harpy nurses who will take the food away, not, thankfully, because the boys know what they have done and are judging their actions with silence. And they won't know. This is something that stays between an angel and his vessel.

It was Jimmy's first kill. Cas's first taste of revenge.

Neither of them regrets it.


End file.
